Buzz Out Loud 1484: The Wii U explained (kind of) (Podcast)

Brian Tong joins us live from the E3 show floor to try to explain this cool-looking new Wii U console/controller thing. Even Cooley seems at least slightly impressed. Also, Sony delivers an apology but kind of a snoozefest of a press conference, 25% of U.S. hackers may be informants (including Antuan Goodwin) and reasoned discussion of Apple's iCloud, iOS, and OS X updates. No, really. --Molly

Brian Tong joins us live from the E3 show floor to try to explain this cool-looking new Wii U console/controller thing. Even Cooley seems at least slightly impressed. Also, Sony delivers an apology but kind of a snoozefest of a press conference, 25% of U.S. hackers may be informants (including Antuan Goodwin) and reasoned discussion of Apple's iCloud, iOS, and OS X updates. No, really. --Molly

Ep. 1484 The Wii U explained (kind of)

Brian Tong joins us live from the E3 show floor to try to explain this cool-looking new Wii U console/controller thing. Even Cooley seems at least slightly impressed. Also, Sony delivers an apology but kind of a snoozefest of a press conference, 25% of U.S. hackers may be informants (including Antuan Goodwin) and reasoned discussion of Apple's iCloud, iOS, and OS X updates. No, really. --Molly

After the magic of yesterday’s WWDC keynote subsided, I found myself baffled and confused by many of the things Apple announced. One being the Mac OSX Lion installation process.

I know the Apple philosophy is to try and make things easier for their users but quite frankly the digital download method opens up a lot more problems then it solves.

For example: What happens if my hard drive fails?

Users wont have a physical copy of the operating system and there computer will not be able to connect to the Mac app store to redownload it.

Apple can’t expect users to instal Snow leopard (the OS they have on a disk) and then redownload lion trough the app store once they are up and running (which is another 4.5 GB download).

Also with internet providers cracking down on data caps a 4.5 GB download is a pretty hefty download. Waiting a couple hours for your OS to download seems a lot less convenient then throwing a disk in your machine and following the prompts.

I think the digital download is great for the environment (less packaging, shipping, etc). But at least offer the user a choice between the digital download and the hard copy.

Am I the only one concerned about this?

Love the show!

- Dustin

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Hey Buzz Crew,

I am Abhi from Alabama. I was watching yesterday’s Apple keynote highlights and noticed something magical about the Photo stream. Every photo taken is automatically uploaded to cloud though it is stored there for 30 days or pushed out by the 1000th picture that gets uploaded after it. I dont have an iPhone but have the pictures taken from one. They are sometimes bit as 3 MB. So unless the iPhone owner is grandfathered into an unlimited data plan or sets it up such that the photo syncing is not done over 3G, ATT and Verizon are in for a treat. The Magic: Before some poor souls realize they are hit with the huge data charge which they have innocently agreed upon under Apple’s spell.

Love the show,

Abhi.

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Hello,

I was listening to your yesterday’s episode and wondered if iSync is in fact such a bad idea. I always thought that I wanted a cloud service, but after listening to the show yesterday, I realized what I really want is not really a cloud service, but rather a cross-platform wireless syncing. I don’t think we are ready for the cloud service yet, simply because not everyone is connected to the Internet.

There are not enough wireless hotspots, not enough data coverage, and not enough net-neutrality yet. For most people, having to be connected to the Internet all the time to listen to the music or access the documents can be quite burdensome. And who wants to have all the data going back and forth to the cloud server every time you listen to the music instead of just being able to download it to any of your devices? I do think only iTunes part sucks, but iTunes match thing, I think, pretty much covers the hole.

Well, I thought iCloud or iSync-whichever you call it- was in fact quite nice. OR Apple and Steve jobs just succeeded, once again, to brainwash me.